SO you have to wonder why Obama's foreign policy is such a complete failure. Look at what he campaigned on in 2008 and you see he was 100% wrong. Re-set with Russia, outreach to Iran, engagement with North Korea, Israel-Palestinian initiative, etc. Every one of them failed.
Perhaps there is a common thread to all these failures that explains them. ANd I think there is.
Obama and the Left seem to believe that hostility between groups comes from a lack of understanding. If we could all sit down and talk, so they say, we could understand each other and hammer out our differences. Thus Obama's pleas for talks with Iran, etc. Talks will solve international conflict.
But what if that view is wrong? It in fact is. Freud, quoting an earlier source, called it the "narcissism of small differences." By that he meant that people intimately connected with each other will experience the most extreme hostilities. And it is true. Palestinians and Israelis have lived side by side for about 100 years. Lots of Palestinains speak Hebrew and watch Israeli TV. Many Israelis speak Arabic. Palis often in the past used to work in Israel doing labor of various kinds. And yet the vast majority of Palestinians want to see every last Israeli wiped off the face of the Earth.
Pakistan and India were historically part of the same empire. Mussharaf the Pakistani president was born in India. They have existed side by side for hundreds of years. Yet there is always a simmering hostility.
And you can go around the world and find the worst conflicts are waged by people who have been closest--Serbs and Croats, for example. Civil wars tend to be the bloodiest.
So it isnt lack of familiarity that breeds hostility. Usually it is the opposite. Yet Obama's foreign policy is based on the mistaken notion that talking will achieve things. IT will not. His policies, and those of any successor who believes the same thing, are destined to fail.
Perhaps there is a common thread to all these failures that explains them. ANd I think there is.
Obama and the Left seem to believe that hostility between groups comes from a lack of understanding. If we could all sit down and talk, so they say, we could understand each other and hammer out our differences. Thus Obama's pleas for talks with Iran, etc. Talks will solve international conflict.
But what if that view is wrong? It in fact is. Freud, quoting an earlier source, called it the "narcissism of small differences." By that he meant that people intimately connected with each other will experience the most extreme hostilities. And it is true. Palestinians and Israelis have lived side by side for about 100 years. Lots of Palestinains speak Hebrew and watch Israeli TV. Many Israelis speak Arabic. Palis often in the past used to work in Israel doing labor of various kinds. And yet the vast majority of Palestinians want to see every last Israeli wiped off the face of the Earth.
Pakistan and India were historically part of the same empire. Mussharaf the Pakistani president was born in India. They have existed side by side for hundreds of years. Yet there is always a simmering hostility.
And you can go around the world and find the worst conflicts are waged by people who have been closest--Serbs and Croats, for example. Civil wars tend to be the bloodiest.
So it isnt lack of familiarity that breeds hostility. Usually it is the opposite. Yet Obama's foreign policy is based on the mistaken notion that talking will achieve things. IT will not. His policies, and those of any successor who believes the same thing, are destined to fail.
